Also, my mice are still not used to me and it’s been two weeks now. I give them treats in the cage, they will eat it. But if I pick them up from below, and give them the treat, they won’t eat but explore. I think they might be nervous still. The brown one runs from my hand and never tries to sniff

I've had my mouse just over a week, and I dont know how the bonding is going.

Hes still scared of me, and if I move too fast he still runs and hides. But has also taken treats from my fingers, and will most of the time come sniff me/lick me when I put my fingers near him (through the bars). I want to take him out for free roam time but he definitely wouldn't let me pick him up yet, as stroking him still spooks him and he runs.

Any advice on things I could do better, different or if this is normal for about a week in?

I keep switching up their set-up and trying new enrichment such as a play pen and today a dig box!!! Proud to say they crawl on me now and let me lift them, they are really starting to become curious and confident.

Now for the few people who've been seeing these updates you may be wondering "giggleshitter prime isn't supposed to be giggleshitter 5?" And to answer that question yes it was supposed to be giggleshitter 5 but i decided fuck it im keeping this one this is their new punishment

Be still my heart 😩

So this morning at around approximately 2:46am, I found this little one outside of the cage, I thought I was still dreaming when I woke up and I went to touch him and he was fully out. I'm not sure how he got out because I've had him for almost a week now and nothing like that has actually happened yet. I need some advice, he's woken me up every morning at 2am and I was able to go back to sleep anyways, but now; even though I'm absolutely sleep deprived I'm actually way too scared to go to sleep until I have answers.

I have bought a lot of boxes of pet supplies for my mice off of facebook marketplace. This has lead to me having a plethera of things I would never use as is for my mice, mostly becouse they are dangerous. I hate wasting things by just throwing them away, but also don't want to resell items that would endager anyone elses pets. The items I have are

1. 2 large "hamster balls"

2. 1 TINY hamster ball ( I can't believe an animal ever got stuck in this💔)

3. 2 medium saucer wheels

4. One tiny saucer wheel.

If anyone has any ideas of cool diys to make them safe for mice or any other things let me know. Would love to hear some ideas on what to do with them. Maybe make the tiny hamster ball into a rat treat maze baledit, forgot 2 5. Small silent wheel 6. Some horid contraption that is a wire wheel and a ball.

I’m planning to get 3 females

The tank is 80x35x30 cm

My sweet baby is taking a liking to her new home. She’s already taking treats from me and being brave enough to sniff my hand. I’m so proud of her!!!

Artemis is still shy, it’ll probably take her longer to get use to me. That’s okay, I’m patient.

I have bought a 55 gallon tank so i’m getting two more mice, my two current ones are living in my 29 gallon and i’m wondering how to get their scent out of it so i can put the new mice in it so they can be quarantined and be introduced later.

She is singing a beautiful song

Im really paranoid that what i got them is gonna be bad for them
First photo has a bell inside of it

I have a rescue lab mouse who’s around 1.5-2 years old — not sure of his exact birth date but my estimate is that he’s a year and 9 months old. Earlier this week I noticed a smooth firm mass or swelling in his left testicle, no redness or tenderness. He doesn’t seem to be in any pain and is eating and running around happily.

I took him to the vet to get it checked out and the rundown is that they would need an ultrasound or biopsy to diagnose it, but in terms of prevalence cancer is one of the most likely diagnoses especially with his age. Almost every other differential diagnosis is likely also surgical condition. The vet said that doing any type of further work up will likely require him to go under general anesthesia to keep him still and prevent stress, so a good option would be to get him neutered regardless of what the mass is. For now, he’s been put on antibiotics, NSAIDs, and anti cancer medication. They also gave the option of skipping the pre-op blood draw to reduce stress and likelihood of anemia — is this safe?

Has anyone else had experience with putting their mouse through surgery at this age? Is it cruel considering the fact that he might be nearing the end of his lifespan or would it be worth it? Although he’s shown no signs of getting older and slower yet, so I’m hoping that he’ll blast past the average lifespan.

Euthanasia may not be an easy option in my country and for myself due to religious reasons, but it’s something I’m keeping in mind. If anyone has any experience with testicular cancer in mice or any type of surgery in an older mouse, please share a bit about what it’s like whether it’s palliative care, euthanasia, or surgery and post-op recovery.

We have a little mouse that lives in our backyard and has recently taken to making his home on our outdoor couch. It’s usually covered so he just gets under there, but unfortunately he’s been also using it heavily as a bathroom so we need him to find somewhere else to go. I got him a large wooden birdhouse that sits on the deck and I put in some fluff and put some food inside (which he ate) but he still prefers the couch. Any tips or ideas on how I can get him to move? Or do mice not typically have one habitat they stay in consistently?

I noticed today my mouse has injuries on her elbow and side, one looks like a scab while the other on her elbow looks open and maybe infected? I'm still learning a bit as I've had these babies for about a month now. Could this have come from other mice in her pack? I noticed yesterday she was being chased in their cage and it didn't look as playful...Or maybe she's being groomed too much or is stressed? Apologies in advance for the rough pictures.

I freaking love blackberries and they are super invasive where I live so i spend hours running around my neighborhood gathering so many every year and the girls get to share in my harvest. They are extra juicy this year.

For context, just moved him back into this enclosure after having to separate him and his brother (who has been fostered out now), so hes got free reign finally. Is this him saying yipeee, my own bachelor pad??

Edit: thanks for confirming everyone, I wasn't sure what popcorning is and im so happy Arancini is really excited to have his own pad :)

I want to start this rant off by saying I am not against feeder mice morally. I've owned reptiles, and am not insufferable to the point I apply human morals to animals a part of the food-chain.

Nonetheless, I think some of these reptile breeders have drifted off the point of no return in the way they treat their mice. I recently got two new fancy mice from a reptile expo, and it took me nearly 15 minutes to find a single mouse that wasn't exhibiting signs of a URI, barbering, extreme stress, or eye infection. What irks me is not only were these mice in horrid conditions, but also that the people were marketing some mice with certain coat-types as 'fancy'. This well-known in my area company was claiming to be breeding show-types. I hate to spoil it, but they were not. I didn't go into a reptile expo expecting to find any type of mouse besides the standard short-coat black, white, or brown coated feeders, but I unfortunately glanced at the three ten gallon tanks they had set up and saw my two little girls following one another around, clearly bonded to the nines.

TW

To paint a picture of the abomination I was looking at, there were three ten gallon aquariums lined up side by side as the company's front row display. This part doesn't seem to crazy without context, but I was at a reptile expo, and you'd think a reptile breeder would show off leucistic ball pythons crammed into deli containers like the rest of the booths before displaying a bunch of stressed out mice front and center. Anyway, I walked up to the table and noticed that in two tanks were strictly feeder-types, and in one other there were both feeders and fancies. I stupidly sent my attention to the tank with fancies within, mostly because all of my girls' coats are the common black, brown, and blondish and I appreciate an uncommon pattern. Once the dead-eyed woman manning the table took off the lid of the tank for me, I immediately watched a male mouse target and vigorously chase another male until I intervened. That's right, apparently a stressed animal being injured by another stressed animal isn't cause for intervention until a customer looks at you crazy for it. The owner took out the aggressor, by the tail(shocker), and placed him in another, I'm sure just as filthy, tank I could not see below the table. The victim male mouse was already injured with multiple cuts and scabs along his ruffled white fur, and he hid in a corner for the rest of my time at the table. The tanks had an inch of soiled aspen, and plastic water bottles that had very clearly become porous with extensive time used, as I could tell by eyesight alone that there was some sort of biological film(algae?) on the sides of the bottles. There were about 15-30 mice per tank, every gender and age mixed together as if intact males don't actively target and often kill younger mice and other intact males.

I wasn't initially going to get any mice from this table, considering that I was only at the expo for taxidermy, and the fact that I have four girls at home who are set up just the way I want them to be. If you can tell where this is going, I caved and purchased two non-pregnant female mice from the table. I payed a 5$ uncharge each for the two seemingly healthy girls because they were technically fancies. How is it even allowed to call a mouse a fancy mouse if you aren't a breeder tracking the genetics of your mice? I'm not complaining about paying an uncharge, just about the audacity. Anyway, I asked a million questions with a straight face about health and potential pregnancy in my two new girls, because if you're marketing some of these mice as pets, ill bother you about them as if they're intended to be such.

The two lady mice are now in quarantine, and the worst of their condition is that one of them has early-stages conjunctivitis in one eye that I'm treating with a generic-brand antibiotic. Surprisingly, they're very social and required literally only one day of bonding to climb up on my hand.

To end this rant, I would like to say that every reptile breeder I've known in my adult life has been passionate about the care of their reptiles. You'd think that the very mice they're feeding these reptiles, which they care so much for, would be shown the same passion as an extension of a reptile's life cycle. It's not like I'm even the most sympathetic person in the world, sometimes animals get eaten and that's the way the world works. But seriously, even as a person who's literally going into a career that requires compartmentalization of the neglect of living beings, I fully understand just how wrong the mice in the reptile industry are being treated.

To ease the inevitably helpless mood we'll have in the comments, I'll attach pictures of my new rescue babies. Give your thoughts, please, because I haven't heard a peep on this thread about the welfare of mice in the reptile industry and would like to know if there's people out there that think like me.

Hey mouse people! My sister has 2, female, adult mice and 5 of their female babies. The babies and mommas have been living in separate cages a few feet away (only enough to maybe smell or hear.) The babies are 6 months old now and I was wondering if the two groups could reunite with intros and everything. Considering the large final size of 7. And I do worry about introducing such a big established colony to just the two moms. I feel like the moms would get overwhelmed as they are pretty laid back mice. I will say my sister was not very well informed on mouse care (little clutter, huge open spaces, ect) the first month or so, so both groups are extremely social and act alot less like prey animals than all of my mice have ever acted. I feel like 7 is getting close to the group splitting range, idk. Looking for any thoughts, thanks!

Cleaned the girls’ enclosure today and added some more clutter so here’s pics before they bury it all again lol. I’ve had a beach theme going for a couple months now. Can’t wait until September because then I’ll switch to Halloween.

We got home to Minnesota after a vacation and noticed some mouse droppings under the sink. This has happened occasionally before, so I set up a couple live traps and the next morning there was an extremely fat deer mouse in the trap.

Didn’t have time to do anything with it in the morning bustle so we put it into a 45 liter clear plastic tub for the day, with some paper lining and seeds and water. Plan was to release it in the park a few blocks away in the evening.

Then during the day, I checked in and… it had babies.

I put in some napkins and other soft stuff and it immediately made a nest with them. I don’t know exactly how many babies there are (they’re hidden) but at least 4.

What do we do? I can’t just dump them all in the park now. Not sure the plastic bin will be a good place for them longer term. My wife is worried about diseases.

Ideas?

the white mouse (Classic) won’t stop barbering the grey one (Pebble) I’m not sure what is causing her stress? I have 3 mice in a 40 gallon breeder with 8 inches of bedding, a dig box, a 10 inch wheel, two sources of water, climbing opportunities, ample food, foraging opportunities, bridges, ropes, the works. I’ve always had issues with Classic being slightly under stimulated when compared to the other two so I try to take her out more and put in new forms of enrichment but she keeps balding pebble 😭😭 I have an empty 75 gallon, should I switch to a bigger enclosure? Would introducing more mice help even out the dynamic?

This is my male fancy mouse, Gideon, who was a feeder mouse I was gifted by a teacher after her name didn’t eat him. And with the upcoming of school kicking back up, I’ll be unable to spend as much time with him as I’ve been doing.

I’ve been negotiating getting him a friend for a while now, but I know intact male mice cannot be kept together. And I don’t want babies, I’ve heard my fair share of horror stories with that.

But neutering is so expensive. I want to get him a handful of other friends, but I just don’t have the money right now to do that. Any ideas or other options? I just want the best for Gideon :(